Researches and excavations made in France of late years have led to the discovery of numerous barbarian cemeteries, and have enabled us to ascertain what were the Merovingian, or, as it would perhaps be more accurate to say, the Germanic funeral customs. These customs evidently were replaced by others when the barbarian finally settled in Gaul, that is, about the middle of the ninth century. The habit of placing in the coffin various pieces of black, red, or white pottery (Fig. 351), together with small vases which seem to have been intended for the same purpose as those used in Christian burials, existed during this period. These vases, often very numerous, no doubt contained food; they were frequently accompanied by a small wooden jar, the handle of which was very richly mounted, and which the _savans_ at one time took to be a Merovingian diadem. But a chemical analysis of the solid residue found in one of these jars, led to the discovery that they were filled with an alimentary substance which gave out a strong odour of fermented beer. [Illustration: Fig. 351.--Gallic or Gallo-Roman Pottery, dug up in Paris and in the neighbourhood.] Subsequently to the period when the barbarians were no longer interred with their weapons of war, there still remained some traces of this primitive custom in Christian society, both in France and Germany; thus, kings were buried in their royal robes, with sceptre and crown. This continued to be the case throughout the Middle Ages; but, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the sceptres and crowns deposited in the coffins were made of brass or tin, in order that thieves might not be tempted to steal them. Such was also the case with bishops and abbots, as is shown by Gregory of Tours, when he speaks of Saint Gall, the Bishop of Clermont, in Auvergne, of the Abbot Mars, of the hermits Marian, Leobard, and Lupicin, being buried in their robes of ceremony. They were covered at their death with the most brilliant insignia of their dignity; but after a certain epoch nothing was placed beside them in the coffin but a wooden crozier, a chalice, and a tin paten. They were always dressed, however, in their pontifical vestments, the gold lace and embroidery of which has, when these tombs have come to be opened, often been found undecayed, while the vestments themselves have crumbled into dust. In the monasteries and communities, the old barbarian rite was observed after the tenth century, and the monks were buried with all their clothing on them; but as the woollen material of which they were made was consumed by age, it is impossible for the archæologist to reconstruct on opening these coffins the monastic dress as it must have been when the body contained in it was buried.